Turning to outside help

We've decided to try family counseling, and we're in the process of finding someone to work with. (Side note: something people often don't realize, is that you don't have to take the first therapist you talk to. It's OK to "interview" a therapist to make sure that you can work with him or her.)

It's not really the angry outbursts that have prompted this. They've been a problem, but what we're concerned about is the depression that we think is underlying much of his behavior. Since he utterly refuses to see a counselor we're going to try going together to see if that will overcome his resistance.

The husband and I will be going anyway, even if the teen won't. We need help to deal with him. Nothing is working. We can't make any impact on him. The only time he's ever in a good mood is when we leave him alone to do what he wants, which is playing video games, getting on the internet, going to the mall, eating junk food, and playing RPGs.

The only handle we have on him, one we use only when absolutely necessary, is to threaten to take away all his RPG stuff. We made a list of couple of months ago of various negative consequences that we could use as behavior motivators. It included things like, losing internet privileges for an hour, two hours, evening, multiple days, weekend; losing video game playing time for similar periods; losing phone privileges, no going to the mall, no time with friends, etc., etc.

So far, he's given up the computer entirely, just to avoid having his teachers sign a notebook stating what homework is required for each class. It's been weeks since he's been online. It's been the same way with everything we've tried. He gives it up rather than make even a minimal effort in his life.

We need help. We don't know what to do anymore. Should we keep fighting with him over this, keep restricting him until there's nothing left in his life but going to school, coming home and sitting in his room all night and weekend? That doesn't seem like a solution. It's already not working and it doesn't hold any promise of working in the future.

Reasoning with him is something we've already concluded doesn't get us anywhere.

Let's see, what else have we tried? Bribery? That doesn't feel right.

Find a way to get him excited and motivated on his own? Tap into his interests in such a way that he finds a reason to care about something? Tried it. That didn't worked either.

We discussed homeschooling him, but after thinking it over we both decided it was far more likely we'd just have even more of nothing happening than we already do. You have to have some cooperation to make homeschooling work, after all.

What we're left with, as far as we can see right now, is waiting until he comes to his senses, while practicing enough tough love to try to keep him from going completely off the rails. Which doesn't feel like any kind of answer at all. He's digging himself in so deeply there's not much chance he can pull himself out, anymore.

What do you do? What do you do if you've got a kid who's just determined to throw his life away? How can you stand by and let him? How can you stop him, though?

I hope talking to an outsider will give us some ideas on where to go from here.